Keep Santa Paula & Ventura CA in your thoughts!

Love Carp. There’s a cool b&b in an original Sears “Craftsman” prefab flat packed house. We spent a lovely lost weekend there not to long ago. We brought our bikes and didn’t touch the car again until it was time to go.
 
They wouldn't let me in the area today as search and rescue still going on so I'm back at the rental. I even tried entering via foot but they threatened to arrest me. I did meet a news guy who told me about this raw copter footage they shot:
I found they zoom into my parents house starting at 48:19. My house isn't shown so I believe it may have survived. Theirs, not so much, entire back is gone, but at least we know what we'll be facing. Two girls across the street are missing (mom and dad are OK). My new news reporter friend told me more bad stories than I wanted to hear. Looks like I may get in on Saturday (my dad left his wallet and has no ID so really would like to get in and grab it for him).
 
Got some pictures of my Aunt & Uncle's place today.
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That's my Aunts' SUV poking through the sidewall of the garage.

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Note the mud line is at about 6'-6". My 91 year old Uncle's bed was planing on top of the water flow up near the ceiling with him on it. The three of them were trapped in the house for an hour before rescue. I have no idea how they survived.

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I found they zoom into my parents house starting at 48:19. My house isn't shown so I believe it may have survived. Theirs, not so much, entire back is gone, but at least we know what we'll be facing.

Looking at that, the back wall/fence really saved the house structure. Those boulders where going to go right though the house taking out walls and bringing it down. As it was the light debris and mud went over the wall, taking out what look like the garage/pool house, pilling it up, really as a little more protection. It's amazing how strong that wall was and just by chance the angle it was built following the property line. There was a lot of hillside heading straight into the house but the fence diverted all the heavy boulders to go around the house or just stopped them.

I know it took out the smaller out building and the whole lower level of the house is probably full of mud but the house still is standing. Im really sorry you and your parents are going though months if worry and distress, with the fire and now this. I know your parents must be getting up there in age, the last thing we as children want to see is a massive disruption in our parents life. They are supposed to just be able to take life slow and easy in their own home. I moved into my moms home to take care of her so she would never have to leave her home till the day she died. I know the importance of that and keeping an assemblance of normalcy in their life.
 
This is correct, the wall saved much of the house. It was actually put there to bring the swimming pool and rear patio up to grade of the house. The master bedroom is on the lower level and has 8' of mud, boulders, and trees in it. Because it was being cleaned and re-painted after the fire, my parents, by the grace of God, were sleeping upstairs. They would surely have been buried alive had thing been different. A search and rescue team actually climbed through the debris, cut a path through, and extracted them. This picture my news friend shared with me shows my 80 year old mom, white as a ghost in shock being escorted out of their driveway the morning of the disaster. My dad can be seen way in the background (in the red vest) coming out as well. These search and rescue guys are heroes, we owe so much to them. My mom is tough as nails...she lost everything (house, friends, all belongings) as a kid in Germany in the war. She came to the US, built up a successful clothing business then, 70 plus years later, she has lost her house, belongings, and several friend once again. Speaking with her last night, she says she's ready to try to build all over again.

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This is correct, the wall saved much of the house. It was actually put there to bring the swimming pool and rear patio up to grade of the house. The master bedroom is on the lower level and has 8' of mud, boulders, and trees in it. Because it was being cleaned and re-painted after the fire, my parents, by the grace of God, were sleeping upstairs. They would surely have been buried alive had thing been different. A search and rescue team actually climbed through the debris, cut a path through, and extracted them. This picture my news friend shared with me shows my 80 year old mom, white as a ghost in shock being escorted out of their driveway the morning of the disaster. My dad can be seen way in the background (in the red vest) coming out as well. These search and rescue guys are heroes, we owe so much to them. My mom is tough as nails...she lost everything (house, friends, all belongings) as a kid in Germany in the war. She came to the US, built up a successful business then, 70 plus years later, she has lost everything again. Speaking with her last night, she says she's ready to try to build all over again.

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Aw man, these things are never supposed to be so close to home, it's always the other guy.

Well you fight as strong as your mom has, and get their house rebuilt ASAP. I know this is going to be hard as their is so much rebuilding needing to be done in Cal this year and the years to come.
 
This is correct, the wall saved much of the house. It was actually put there to bring the swimming pool and rear patio up to grade of the house. The master bedroom is on the lower level and has 8' of mud, boulders, and trees in it. Because it was being cleaned and re-painted after the fire, my parents, by the grace of God, were sleeping upstairs. They would surely have been buried alive had thing been different. A search and rescue team actually climbed through the debris, cut a path through, and extracted them. This picture my news friend shared with me shows my 80 year old mom, white as a ghost in shock being escorted out of their driveway the morning of the disaster. My dad can be seen way in the background (in the red vest) coming out as well. These search and rescue guys are heroes, we owe so much to them. My mom is tough as nails...she lost everything (house, friends, all belongings) as a kid in Germany in the war. She came to the US, built up a successful clothing business then, 70 plus years later, she has lost her house, belongings, and several friend once again. Speaking with her last night, she says she's ready to try to build all over again.

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We’re so blessed that our loved ones made it out. But by the grace of God ...
 
Here's some satellite imagery of one of the affected areas (I circled my parents home). Just amazing how many mature, sturdy oaks were removed.
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If I didn’t know better I’d be thinking who built that big house in the middle of that river?
It looks like an old creek bed now, I wonder if it was originally.
Not good to build on ancient river or creek beds in Cal, earthquakes just tear up the buildings on them.
 
It might look like that, but the creek was on the E border of the 6 acre property, while the house was on the west border, and up much higher. The creek was always dry, except for a few of historical storms in the 60's and 80's where it actually flowed up to about 4' of water (no problem as the walls were about 12' high). Problem with this storm is that the debris clogged the creek everywhere as well as the passes under the bridges, so the flow made a new "river", which went wherever it wanted, including areas 20' above the creek. It would be more obvious if you saw the elevations. This is the reason why many people don't fully understand how remarkable this event was. Near another dry creek (San Ysidro creek) about 3 miles to the E is the historic San Ysidro Ranch. It has sat there high and dry and unharmed since 1893. It is mostly gone as a result of this storm as that creek did the same thing. This was not a case of human neglect. Rather, it was a case of unheard of circumstances (largest fire in CA history followed by largest 30 min of rainfall in history) combining in a biblical way that formed new creeks and waterways, right through peoples homes.
Believe me, Santa Barbara has some of the strictest planning/zoning/building codes and ordinances anywhere (in fact, many builders find it too difficult and go elsewhere). Civil engineers have to plan for 100 year flood patterns, 7+ scale earthquakes, and 50' Tsunamis, all while protecting the environment and meeting the most strict energy codes in the nation. Problem was that this was a 10,000 year event.
Some of the comments posted here are akin to asking "why do they build skyscrapers and bridges in California?" after a 9.0 earthquake in San Fransisco. We plan and build for 7.5's, fully realizing that in some point in history, a huge one will come. Which just know that odds are it will never occur in our lifetimes.
 
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Live Oaks mark water in California. They're there because of sub-terrainian water/flows. They're very clearly marking that creek bottom in the before shot.
I've got a stand of them on my north-west property line, and they follow a water course that flows down my northern property line when it rains hard. Better than a dousing rod; live oaks, and water.
 
Live Oaks mark water in California. They're there because of sub-terrainian water/flows. They're very clearly marking that creek bottom in the before shot.
I've got a stand of them on my north-west property line, and they follow a water course that flows down my northern property line when it rains hard. Better than a dousing rod; live oaks, and water.
And many are over 500 years old! The huge majority of California oaks grow in areas that have never seen floods. I drove through Santa Barbara, SLO, and Monterey Counties to meet up with my wife this evening, a drive I've made many times. I see a lot of oak woodlands on this trip, and they have no relation to water. The correlation has more to do with development: the only areas free of oaks are farms, housing/commercial areas, and vineyards while areas with clusters of oaks are rocky hills, steeper slopes, or valleys (where development is more expensive, so why bother when flatland or gentle slope is plentiful). Even so, would you expect your NW property line to flood to the point where your house was underwater? How large is your property? There are houses damaged in Montecito that were 1/4 mile from any creek bed.
It's nice to sit back and draw simplistic conclusions to try and explain what happened here, but there are no simple answers. I've been on the ground for just a short time and can tell you it makes no sense. I saw huge boulders today in areas where no one can explain where they came from. I had lunch with a group of survivors up in Mission Canyon today and we were surrounded by a jungle of oaks (and there was zero flooding in this area). We all know precipitation that drops in the mountains works its way through the canyons to the ocean, it's been that way since the beginning of time, but the path here was altered in an un-historical way, including massive flows in areas where few oaks were present but other vegetation was removed by fire.
Nobody seeks a logical explanation more than I. Is it wise to rebuild my parents house in this location? What does the civil engineer say today? Why did the neighbor on one side be unscathed while on the other side destroyed (with 2 dead), despite predictions based on geology, elevation, and historical flow suggest the opposite? I hope to get answers to some of these questions in the coming weeks.
Not everything is easy to explain: I saw before/after photos a few weeks ago taken in Ventura County where a few stucco houses with tile or asphalt roofs had burned to the ground in the Thomas fire while a neighboring house in between them with wood siding and a what appeared to be a shingle roof remained un-touched. Logical thought cannot explain this.
 
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We lived off of upper State St. during the huge SB fires in the mid sixties. There was nothing remotely on this scale even after those fires which burnt for 2 weeks. Considering that Montecito has been settled since the 1860's and nothing like this has ever happened before this is just plain tragic.
 
Down the road a piece the 1995 La Conchita landslide and residents escaped.
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